A syndicate thought to have orchestrated the UK’s largest drug trafficking scheme smuggled over £7 billion worth of illicit substances concealed within trucks loaded with decaying onions and other pungent vegetables.
Leader Paul Green, 59, known as ‘The Big Fella’, served as the liaison for various organized crime factions (OCG’s) that paid to transport heroin, cocaine, amphetamines, and cannabis into the UK from across Europe.
Green and his associates took ‘remarkable measures’ to obscure their participation in the narcotics trade, establishing a number of shell enterprises and storage facilities in Rotterdam and northern England using fraudulent and stolen identities.
The gang concealed the drugs among shipments of fresh produce at the Dutch origin of their operation, which were then dispatched to the UK by unwitting haulage companies, whereby criminals paid a ‘transportation fee’ upon arrival.
Onions, garlic, or ginger were reported as the gang’s preferred commodities as they effectively masked the odor of narcotics.
Among their clientele was Merseyside mob enforcer John Kinsella, 53, who was fatally shot by an assassin in May 2018 while walking his dogs alongside his pregnant partner.
Prosecutor Andrew Thomas KC noted that a hallmark of the gang’s operations from March 2016 to September 2018 was the ‘persistence to maintain the importations despite arrests and/or drug confiscations’.
He explained to jurors: ‘As soon as one front company became compromised, they would shift to another.’
Only six drug seizures occurred, but investigators from the National Crime Agency (NCA) were able to confirm at least 240 shipments took place, averaging up to four deliveries per week.
‘Big Fella’ Green, 59, had no previous offenses but had legally altered his name twice from Simon Swift to James Russell and then to Green, owing to financial struggles and his admitted participation in property and business fraud.
In addition to catering to his criminal clients, Green also imported drugs for his own faction to distribute for sale.
During sentencing, Judge Paul Lawton addressed the gang members: ‘Your primary objective was the international importation of controlled substances on an unprecedented scale valued at a minimum of £2 billion and possibly as much as £7 billion.
‘The damage inflicted beyond the importation is unfathomable.
‘What you were truly disseminating was addiction, despair, societal decline, and death.’
The defendants were split into two trials, with reporting prohibitions lifted after the conclusion of the second trial, which spanned nine months.
The initial trial involving Green lasted 23 months, as jurors required 141 hours to reach their decisions.
Green, a resident of Widnes, Cheshire, was sentenced to 32 years in prison after being found guilty of conspiracy to import narcotics and fraud by false pretenses.
His ‘right-hand man’, Steven Martin, 53, from Chorley Old Road, Bolton, Greater Manchester, who managed the financial operations, received a 28-year sentence, while another significant cohort, Muhammad Ovais, 46, of Bournelea Avenue, Burnage, Manchester, who oversaw drug distribution to OCG clients, was sentenced to 27 years imprisonment.
Other individuals sentenced for drug importation conspiracy included fluent Dutch speaker Russell Leonard, 48, of Grosmont Road, Kirkby, Liverpool, who received a 24-year sentence; as well as Dutch OCG leaders Johannes Vesters, 54, and Barbara Rijnbout, 53, both from Utrecht, who were sentenced to 20 years and 18 years respectively.
Richard Harrison, NCA’s regional head of investigations, stated: ‘This was an exceptionally high-harm OCG that employed every conceivable tactic to elude detection and evade justice.
‘The perpetrators surreptitiously imported immense quantities of drugs into the UK. They exhibited a complete absence of ethics, sinking to the lowest levels and leaving a path of destruction for entirely innocent individuals by cloning businesses and pilfering identities.
‘NCA officers and our Dutch counterparts were relentless, leaving no stone unturned throughout this investigation.’
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